


Chains forged in life: An Arctic Carol

by Gwerfel



Category: A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens, The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Christmas, Gen, Ghosts, Hallucinations, Injury Recovery, Opium, Period Typical Attitudes, dickensian nightmare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:06:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28289646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gwerfel/pseuds/Gwerfel
Summary: Christmas Eve, 1846 - Cornelius Hickey is visited by the ghosts of Past, Present and Future, who urge him to mend his wicked ways.For Terror Bingo 2020 fill: The point of no return.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 27
Collections: The Terror Bingo





	Chains forged in life: An Arctic Carol

**Author's Note:**

> So I had this idea late on Sunday evening after too much ginger wine, and cranked the whole thing in three agonising days. I'm very pleased with myself.
> 
> It's set shortly after the flogging and before Episode 5. Most of Hickey's backstory comes from my first ever Terror fic 'The Way was Carved in Ice', but you don't need to have read that to enjoy this. 
> 
> Merry Christmas, Terror fans!
> 
> All of my thanks and admiration to Kt_fairy, who read this TWICE in under 12 hours just so I could get it out on Christmas eve, because she loves me, and that is the spirit of the season <3

_I care not a curse for the guardians,_

_And I won't be dragged away;_

_Just let me have the fit out,_

_It's only on Christmas Day_

_That the black past comes to goad me,_

_And prey on my burning brain;_

_I'll tell you the rest in a whisper —_

_I swear I won't shout again._

**_Stave 1: Hickey’s Ghost_ **

Hickey was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever, about that. There may not have been any burial register; there were no clergymen, clerks or undertakers - no mourners. But he was dead, all right. Dead as a turd in a milk bucket.

The man presently using the name Cornelius Hickey knows this, because he is the one who smothered him, wrapped him in bedsheets, weighted him, and rolled him into the canal. He had watched the ghostly white bundle sink into the pitch dark water until it disappeared; he’d made as sure as anyone would have. 

So there is absolutely no way, not a ghost of a chance, that the round-eyed face of Cornelius Hickey (the _former_ Cornelius Hickey) could be staring out at the present Cornelius Hickey from the knots in the wood of the bulkhead of _Terror's_ fo'c'sle. It is unaccountable.

The face is both there and not quite there, blinking dolefully between the two seams which he - the current and only _living_ Cornelius Hickey - has been ordered to caulk. It is not a vengeful face, as one might expect, but temperament matters very little; the pressing concern is that he sees it at all.

The fo’c’sle is like a furnace, as though someone has stoked the engines down in the hold back to full power. The heat rises like steam, so dense it crowds in on him; it gets into his ears and nostrils, where it condenses and drips. The parts of his clothes which touch his skin chafe and burn unbearably. He does not know how the rest of the crew can stand it without a word of complaint. Behind him some of the remaining men on _Terror_ talk quietly amongst themselves. Lane is plucking fretfully at the strings of his fiddle, practising the tunes he will play over tomorrow's pitiful revelry. With so few men aboard now it will be a very humble Christmas day, but Hickey has had his share of those, and never troubles himself to mark the season. 

He wipes sweat from his eyes and blinks. It must be the heat which is causing this strange apparition; that and the evil fumes from the bubbling bucket of tar he has set down. The face is nothing but a vapour, a mirage contrived by some trick of the lamplight through the shimmering, muggy air. 

He makes to raise his hammer, to smash the face away, ram its fat dead lips full of oakum and smear it black with filthy pitch. But as he does a peculiar feeling overtakes him, and the dead face of Cornelius Hickey seems to glow like starlight. Smiling, it begins to open its gruesome mouth.

“Fuck!” Hickey lurches backwards in shock, stumbling over his bucket and landing hard on his back. He groans and grits his teeth as agony splits through him and warmth pools in the seat of his trousers. For a slow and stupid moment he thinks he's pissed himself, before realising it is more blood. For days and days, it's been blood. It seeps out beneath his bandages, it sticks to the coarse hairs between his legs, dries stiff in the fabric of all of his clothes. The raw meat and iron scent of it follows him, sometimes he thinks he can smell it even over the acrid tar.

He pushes himself up onto his elbows and looks at the bulkhead again. Nothing; only cracked seams and knotted timber. He imagined it. 

“Cornelius?” Magnus towers over him, his soft doughy face quivering with concern. “Did you fall?”

“Be a pal,” Hickey replies, pulling his face into a friendly smile and reaching up, “give us a hand.”

Manson hauls him upwards with no trouble at all, only perhaps a little too quickly. It’s the cuts from the fucking flogging; the skin will knit together if he stays still, but the slightest movement will rip them open anew. The pain in his back and legs is immense, and combined with the rush of upheaval red spots dazzle his vision and fresh sweat springs on his forehead. His empty stomach churns. He staggers against Magnus like a drunkard, feet unable to find their place on the listing deck.

"Cornelius?" Magnus asks again, fear creeping in.

“Enough malingering, Mr Hickey,” Darlington’s nasal whine cracks out from somewhere behind. “Back to work.”

"What's going on down there?" Hodgson's voice, much further away.

Hickey tries to twist about to call something back, but all of the noise of the fo’c’sle grows suddenly distant, as if it is coming to him through the wrong end of a funnel - now the lights are dimming, and the heat, the raging heat threatens to overwhelm him. 

“Lieutenant Hodgson, sir?” He hears Magnus call out, “it’s Cornelius…”

“What’s the meaning of this, Mr Hickey?!”

But their voices are in another place, and he is drifting quite away.

* * *

They use smelling salts to revive him, so he wakes spitting and grunting, soaked in his own sweat and face down on the surgeon’s table. The temperature in here is no more bearable, his skin is blazing, his fingers seem to swell and he can taste salt and metal on his tongue. 

Worse yet is the combined reek of sickness which permeates the yellow gloom of _Terror’s_ sickbay; a heady pall of putrid rotting of flesh, pus and bile. The men in here were too sick to leave for Erebus when everybody else did. He winces at the much too familiar hacking coughs of the consumptives, and the agonised groans of the scurvy riddled. In the corner Hickey catches sight of the pale wormish pink of Private Heather’s exposed brains.

Of all the squalid corners of this stinking ship, this is the very last place he wishes to find himself. “Let me off,” he groans, and attempts to heave himself up. 

A light hand presses gently between his shoulders, pushing him back down again. This is easily achieved, feeble as he is.

“You’ve a fever from your wounds, Mr Hickey,” McDonald intones over his shoulder as cold fingers begin peeling the bastard bandages back, “lie still now.”

“Let me up,” he mutters weakly.

“I’ll give you something for the pain.”

He presses his lips together. What a laugh. He has never needed anything before, he does not see why this pain should be given any concessions. “You shouldn’t be given any heavy duties,” McDonald continues, his soft voice washing over Hickey, threatening to lull him back to insensibility. “I shall have words with Mr Darlington.”

He hears the doctor wringing out a rag in water and knows what’s coming. He tightens his jaw again and braces himself, fingernails scrabbling against the wooden table ready for the pain to climb a few notches higher as salt water is applied. 

“ _Fucking cunt_ ,” he chokes, eyes streaming. 

“My apologies,” Mcdonald replies with easy good cheer, “we’ve a hammock free for you after this, you can sleep it off.”

“Rather not,” Hickey hisses through clenched teeth.

"Now lad, want to be well enough for your Christmas dinner, don't you?"

"Bugger Christmas."

Mcdonald only chuckles. There is no sense talking to him; he may be the only man on the ship Hickey could not best in an argument. He’s the captain down here, holding dominion over the filth and the fever and the pain - you cannot reason with a man like that. 

Presently more men enter the room, their heavy boots crunching on the deck; they’ve come straight in from outside. 

“Brought the snow you asked for, doctor,” Sergeant Tozer’s distinctive voice rings through Hickey’s suffering. 

“Thank you, Sergeant, set it down just there,” Mcdonald continues applying salt.

“He all right, then?” Solomon asks with a note of dubious curiosity, “heard he fainted.”

“Just a fever,” Mcdonald replies with the same calm he uses for all maladies, mild and fatal. He begins to bandage the wounds again, and Hickey relaxes his muscles one by one, assured the worst has passed. “Sergeant,” Mcdonald speaks again, “would you fetch me a few ice bags from the cupboard over there? Then we’ll move Mr Hickey into a hammock.”

“Don’t,” Hickey murmurs, his temperature still rising. He wishes they would remove his jacket, he can’t think properly. “Don’t.”

“Yes, and we’ll administer some laudanum,” Mcdonald says, as though Hickey suggested it, “help you sleep.”

They ignore his complaints, but they do undress him, and then bear him into a hammock. It isn’t like his own bedplace, which he has grown very accustomed to over the past three years; it has sides, like a coffin. He tries to mumble something, but he is as weak as a kitten by now, and delirious with the heat. The ice bags, filled with snow, are packed in around him, making him sigh and hiss in equal measure, finding the cold both a relief and a queer shock.

Finally, Tozer is bid to hold him still while Mcdonald pours his bitter poison down Hickey’s throat. He tries to fight that too, but it’s all no good; the ice and the sweat and the salt have addled him, and he can feel the laudanum begin to take hold the moment it reaches his belly. A cloud of unimaginable peace descends, smoothing over every one of his hurts, dulling them, turning him as stupid and pliant as Magnus. 

“There, now,” Mcdonald murmurs, and Hickey shuts his eyes just to put an end to it. 

* * *

Though he has shunned all intoxication for most of his life, he is not ignorant to the effects. As Hickey returns to consciousness after what feels like only scarce moments have passed, he frowns, grimacing at the dreadful itching beneath his bandages. If he can feel, then he cannot be dreaming; he is not stupefied. Perhaps his years of abstinence were uncalled for after all, perhaps he is immune, he feels no change in himself at all. The ice bags at least have had some effect, though still warm the temperature is bearable and the air is thin enough to breathe again.

It is dark - or he has not opened his eyes yet. He listens first, uncurling his fingers and raising his head from his pillow. It smells like another man, the hairs on it tickle his cheeks. Sickbay is almost silent, so perhaps he slept some hours, past first watch. Stretching, he forces himself fully awake, blinking in the strange oily light. It takes him longer than usual to realise there is somebody watching him from the other side of the room.

When he raises his head to peer at the figure it begins to approach. The shadows are thick, lamps turned down low, and Hickey cannot make out the man’s face, he only knows that it is not Doctor Mcdonald. He comes closer and closer, and the faint shafts of light from the window above strike across his body. 

The man is not wearing a sailor’s uniform, not any clothes at all; instead he is wrapped in a shroud of some kind; thin calico sheets which cling to his body as though they are wet. The sewer stench of Regent’s Canal rises from the boards and Hickey turns over quickly, trying to sit up. His hammock swings violently as he falls back, catching him and then pendulating horribly forward, right into the approaching corpse. The cot bumps against its belly, forcing black river silt up gurgling through its chest, pouring from between his lips, his nostrils. His face is clear now.

“You!” Hickey rasps, gripping the sides of the hammock. All around them are shadows, he cannot tell if anybody else sees it, or hears him. “You’re dead!”

He is falling to pieces, his skin is grey and loose, his mouth sagging, London eels have plucked out his eyes. Heart thudding, Hickey swallows, “what do you want with me?”

“Much,” says the dead man. He speaks clearly, though the eels have taken his tongue, too - they eat the softest parts first.

“You’re dead,” Hickey repeats, “you’re not real.”

The former Cornelius Hickey’s slimy lips draw into an ugly smirk. He places his clammy hands on the cot and stops its swinging. “Is seeing not believing?” the ghost says in a slanting Irish drawl, slower and hoarser than he was in life. “Shall we try your other senses, murderer?”

The ghost reaches for him and Hickey recoils, “I may be dreaming,” he says, “from the laudanum. And if this is a dream, and I am real, then I suppose you must be also.”

“Very practical of you,” the ghost of Cornelius Hickey inclines his head. His red hair is all but gone, clinging to his skull in patches like fine moss. 

"Have you come to kill me?"

"No," the ghost replies, shoulders lowering in defeat, and Hickey sees that he could not, even if he wanted to. 

That confirms it. He is quite sure that this is a dream, and that it is _his_ dream. Stands to reason that no harm can come to him at the hands of an amusement his own mind has conjured up in collusion with the opium - which must have an effect on him after all. 

“The question, then,” Hickey says, crossing his legs and finding that it brings him no pain any more, “is why would you come to trouble me?”

“Why you?” The gruesome ghost is incredulous - if such mundane expressions of feeling might be attributed to spirits.

“Hadn’t you a family?” Hickey shrugs, “I remember you saying something about a mother. Why not drip all over her floorboards? She might even be pleased to see you. Or was it your yearning to see the Arctic?” he snorts derisively, “well I tell you, I don’t think much of it. You sold me a pup and no mistake.”

“I have come with a message for you.”

“Let’s have it, then,” Hickey lies back, folding his arms behind his head. 

“Your soul is in danger, here.”

Hickey tilts his head, gesturing about, “I expect so.”

“You’ve done terrible things, but the worst is yet to come.”

He ponders this, and supposes it must be correct enough. The rules which govern the expedition grow thinner by the day, the situation is not improving, and will not improve unless somebody takes action. 

“You will be visited by three spirits.”

“More of you, are there?”

“The first will come when the bell tolls one.”

“Fine, fine,” he waves a hand, reaching up for his coat, which is hanging from his hammock hook. He’s sure he has some tobacco somewhere. 

“You must listen to what they tell you. You must heed the things they show you, if you want to avoid your fate.”

“That’s the message?” His fingers find his tobacco pouch inside his breast pocket and he pulls it out. It is an odd sort of dream, this, for he could swear he can really smell the rich warm scent of the tobacco, he can feel it in his hands. “Three ghosts and my soul is in danger? Will they all be like you?”

“You will know them all,” the ghost confirms, “as those you have wronged.”

“Who have I ever wronged?” Hickey grins, rolling his tobacco.

The ghost continues to stare at him with black sockets, his hands still gripping the cot, turning the cotton wet.

“Oh now,” Hickey shakes his head, “you came across me on an unusual night, that’s all. I’d have meant you no harm, if you hadn’t had those papers on you. We might have passed a pleasant evening - wasn’t I good company? Give me that, at least.”

“You’re a wicked man,” says the ghost of Cornelius Hickey. “If you ask me you deserve whatever vile end you get.”

“I intend to,” Hickey searches for matches, holding the cigarette between his lips and murmuring around it, “deserve it, I mean.”

“At one bell,” the ghost repeats, finally removing its mouldering hands from the hammock, “your first spirit will arrive.”

“Much obliged,” Hickey nods, striking a match.

The flare of phosphorescent light blazes brightly in the air, momentarily illuminating every thread on Hickey's blanket, every grain in the wooden beams above, and in the shock of it the ghost vanishes.

Silence and darkness descend once more, only the steady orange glow of his fag end and a thin white thread of smoke. The other hammocks in sickbay slowly return to view as his eyes adjust. Hickey sucks on his cigarette and lies back and thinks. 

*

**_Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits_ **

Damn the fucking laudanum, he’s fallen asleep again before one bell strikes, a solitary echoing chime. It doesn’t tend to bother him any more, the constant bell ringing, not like it did during the first few months of the voyage. Then he thought he might go mad, jumping at every half hour interval; it was worse than prison for trying to get some kip.

He got used to it, just as he has learnt to get used to everything else.

He wrenches his eyes open this time and sits up. There’s still no pain, and not a sound in sickbay. Elsewhere in the ship he thinks perhaps he can hear a conversation taking place, movement, Neptune whining. The ice creaks against the hull with a terrible groan. A dream, then, certainly a dream. There was no ghost Cornelius Hickey, no spectral warning, only opium and fever and too many missed meals. 

Still. As he sits up he picks at his blankets and finds a charred black hole where he must have dropped his cigarette. That might have been anyone, he tells himself. 

“More mending,” a voice says just behind his head. “I wish you’d take more care with things.”

The golden yellow light of an oil lamp pours over Hickey’s hammock and he turns his head to see Gibson loom into view, holding out a lantern which is shining more brightly than Hickey has seen anything shine since the summer, filling the sickbay with a strange mock-daylight. 

“Good evening, Mr Gibson,” Hickey squints, fighting the urge to shield his eyes. Once he can see clearly, he is surprised by the blueness of Billy’s coat; the gleam of his buttons like a row of silver sixpences. Perhaps it is the brightness, but Billy is looking better than he has in months, his skin warm with good health, hair and beard neatly trimmed, his beauty strangely magnified. The laudanum again, Hickey wonders. “What brings you here?”

“Your welfare.”

“It was my impression that you had no further care for that.”

“Didn’t you hear?” Billy looks down at him, almost pityingly. “They just rang the first bell.”

“You’re not fetching me for duty - tell them Mcdonald said that--”

“That isn’t why I’m here,” Billy shakes his head, raising the lamp to cast its beam higher. There is something behind the glass, Hickey can almost see it now, narrowing his eyes and peering into the white hot flame - there is something moving, something drifting inside, trapped. _I am still dreaming_ , Hickey thinks, _I’m more stewed than I thought_. “You were told you would meet three spirits,” Billy says.

“You’re one of them, then,” Hickey replies, tearing his gaze away from whatever is swimming inside the lamp. He meets Billy’s eyes, piercing and reproachful, which is nothing out of the ordinary these days. “I thought spirits were supposed to be dead.”

“All things being equal, I don’t think it matters much,” Billy shrugs his narrow shoulders. “When we are where we are.”

Cornelius accepts this for what it is, never having been a religious man. The fact that it is Billy who stands before him now is further proof that this dream is not from any spiritual channel, but dredged up from his own waking thoughts. If the laudanum proposes to present him with a gallery of every man he has ever fucked then at least the show will be an entertaining one.

“Got a message for me, like the last one?”

“I am the ghost of Christmas past.”

“Oh yeah? Long past?”

“Your past.”

Hickey laughs, shaking his head, “ _my_ past, Mr Gibson? And you've come about my welfare?”

“Yes, and your reclamation,” Billy nods solemnly, “take heed, Cornelius.”

"If you know my past," Hickey narrows his eyes, "why are you calling me Cornelius?"

"Would you prefer me to call you E-"

"--no," Hickey jerks his head. He won't hear that name spoken here, it doesn't belong here.

"Are you ready, then, Cornelius?" 

Billy holds out his hand, and though it is a hand he has known very well, a hand which has brought him a great deal of comfort and enjoyment over the past year or so, Hickey finds himself hesitating. Something will happen, when he takes it, he can feel the earthy promise of it turning over inside himself, and he does not know if he is ready. He looks up at the spirit again, hoping for some reassurance.

“Come with me,” Billy smiles fondly, “come and see.”

No sooner has he spoken these words, than Hickey is grasping Billy’s warm familiar hand, and they are passing through the ship. In a matter of moments they find themselves walking together down a long cobbled street with tall buildings all around them. There is no Arctic, no snow, no _Terror_ ; it is a grey, cold winter day in Liverpool.

“Christ,” Hickey looks about himself in disgust, “why the fuck would you bring me here?”

Billy - or the spirit of Billy, or perhaps even the spirit that is wearing Billy - watches him mildly, but does not let go of his hand. Hickey is conscious of a thousand odours and noises in the air around them, each linked to a different painful lesson, humiliation, or horror which occurred in this vile corner of this vile city.

“Don’t cry,” Billy says, and Hickey furiously rubs his face. 

“Go on then,” he grunts, “take me where you’re taking me.”

“You know the way, don’t you?”

He could walk it blindfolded. He leads Billy up the street, recognising every pavestone, lamppost and gutter. A group of ragged boys rushes past - pickpockets, it’s easy enough to tell, but they don’t try to rob Hickey or Billy, they don’t pay them any mind at all.

“They are only shadows,” Billy explains, “they can’t see us.”

A brass band takes up playing as they approach the tall wrought iron workhouse gates. He cringes at the sound of the instruments as they clank out their merry tune, right beneath the workhouse windows.

“What day is it?” he asks as they walk straight through the gates.

“Christmas day,” Billy answers promptly, and the band begins _God rest ye merry gentlemen._ “Eighteen thirty.”

“It would be,” Hickey grunts. He squares his shoulders as they cross the yard, passing straight through the brickwork as though they are made of nothing at all. 

Inside they can still hear the band playing faintly through the windows. It is just as cold as it was outside, the only fire burning in the great hall they find themselves in is a tiny brazier at the far end, where a warden is warming his feet. 

Four hundred children sit at hard splintering benches laid out in twelve rows, bent over their work splitting rope. They are all boys, the girls live somewhere separate, and all are dressed in identical trousers and jackets made of stiff fernought cloth, their hair identically cropped close to their pink scalps.

“Can you see yourself?” Billy asks him, and Hickey lets go of his hand and begins to walk up and down the rows, trying to catch something - anything - recogniseable. But everything is the same; their wooden clogs, their tiny red fingers, their hard faces, already full of a bitter distaste for life. He finds the boy by number, eventually; each bench place is marked with a carved numeral. 

“There,” he says, standing before himself, looking down at the pale haired boy working diligently. There is a faintly copper tinge in his eyelashes, and his face is rounder than he imagined, but he is quite sure. The backs of his hands are striped deep dark purple from the caning he received only the day before, and he has a scabies rash on his chin.

“How old are you?” Billy appears at his side.

“Eleven, or thereabouts.”

“You’re very small.”

“Always have been.”

“Was this how Christmas always was, when you were a boy?”

He nods, unable to stop staring at the child, the way his nose runs, and he won’t wipe it on his sleeve, the way his fingers are rigid from the pain of the bruises. Christmas was always the same as any other day. There will be a meal later, charity from the local wealthy do-goods, and they will come to watch the children eat while dressed up in their furs and finery. They will sing a hymn before bed, perhaps. Worse than nothing. 

“Why do you think we’re here on this particular Christmas?” Billy asks him.

“What?”

“Why do you think--”

But the door at the back of the hall opens, interrupting Billy. Mrs Crannock enters, the old bitch in charge of the children’s wards. She isn’t as tall as he remembers her, but the sour look on her pinched and wrinkled face and the sweep of her black skirts is just as repulsive to him now. She is followed into the work hall by two men in tartan jackets and billycock hats. One of them is smoking a pipe. They walk between the rows of boys, who daren’t look up, but who sneak glances and turn to catch each other’s eyes when the three adults’ backs are turned. 

The man smoking a pipe has a fountain pen in his coat pocket, the gold clip catches the light. Hickey knows this man very well. 

“Back to the ship,” he says to Billy, “I’ve seen enough.”

“Who is that man?”

“Billy, I mean it.”

“Why is he looking at you like that, Cornelius?”

A fever flush runs through him, he clenches his fists, “Billy, I swear, I’ll fucking--” he turns to grab him, to shake this ghost Gibson, this fog of laudanum and delirium, but before he can the scene has changed again, and the workhouse has vanished.

Hickey is still gripping Billy’s shoulders, and doesn’t let go as he looks about himself. They are in a dingy corridor somewhere - the landing of a house, maybe. It smells strongly of damp and old newspapers. 

“What’s this, then?” he blinks.

“Another Christmas, some years later. Do you remember?”

“Take me back to the ship,” he spits. This is his dream, he ought to have some say. 

“We can’t go back,” Billy says calmly, “only forward. I am sorry, Cornelius,” he shakes his head, raising a hand to touch Hickey’s knuckles still bunching the fabric of his jacket. “I am sorry about the workhouse, and everything that happened afterwards, that’s a terrible thing for a child.”

“Bugger off,” Hickey lets him go, shaking himself and stepping away. The floorboards don’t creak beneath his feet, but they used to - it comes back to him all at once. This is London; this is 1838, his last winter in this boarding house.

The door in front of them opens abruptly, and despite knowing that he is a spirit in this world, Hickey jumps back. A man exits, still buttoning his trousers up, his cap in his hand and his scarf askew. He stands on the landing, oblivious to Hickey and Billy, adjusting himself and smoothing back his dark hair, before descending the stairs, taking them two at a time and whistling cheerfully. Hickey feels a long dormant twinge of distaste for that kind of man.

When he has reached the bottom step he crosses paths with somebody else coming in the front door. The man leaving nods and touches his cap at the man entering, but is ignored. The door closes, and Hickey watches his nineteen-year-old self climb the stairs quickly, head bowed beneath the brim of his hat. He pushes the door to the boarding room open, and together Billy and Hickey follow him inside.

There she is, lying on the bed; their big wide bed in their Shoreditch rooms, the only permanent address he ever had, with its iron frame and piles and piles of patchwork blankets. Bess is so much younger than he thought she was, with her paint washed off for the evening but her red wig still on, she is in her stays and petticoats despite the chill in the air, humming to herself with her usual bottle of blue ruin.

The sight of her, and the smell of the room, the little magazine cut outs pasted up by her nightstand, her colourful dresses flung over the fire guard, it all stirs a peculiar sensation in Hickey’s midriff. One he ought not to feel, he thinks, if he is truly a spirit.

“There you are, kid,” Bess beams at the youth who has just come in. He is beardless, but otherwise much as Hickey imagines he looks now. “Come over here and give Bessie a cuddle, eh?” She slurs in her thick Liverpool twang.

“Been working?” His younger self asks, removing his hat, then his coats with slow practised movements. He has learnt to dampen these flourishes and gestures since being on _Terror_ , they mark him out as a thief, and worse. 

“When do I bloody do anything else?” she groans, her head lolling.

“New bottle, that.”

“Aye, what if it is?” she clutches it clumsily to her breast, as though he might try to take it from her; as if he cares. “It’s my Christmas present to myself, isn’t it?”

“Bugger Christmas.”

“Miserable bastard,” she laughs, drinking again. “Where have you been then?”

“None of your business,” he bends to take off his shoes. When he isn’t looking, Bess gives him a sly smirk, raising her eyebrow.

“Working your own corner, I suppose,” she says. Sitting up and straightening her wig, she sets the gin down on the floor beside the bed, “here,” she crows, holding out her hand, “got you something and all.”

The young man straightens, frowning at her, “why?”

“Just take it before I change my mind and pawn it for six more bottles.”

He sits on the bed and reaches across. She uncurls her fingers and drops it into his hand. A pocket knife - a very fine one, with a dark wooden handle inlaid with mother of pearl diamonds. He stares at it, and says nothing. Bess looks pleased, and reaches for her bottle again. “There’s a pretty thing, eh.”

“Already got a knife.”

“Now you’ve a nicer one.”

He pulls his legs up onto the bed to sit nearer her, still turning the blade over in his hands, flicking it open on its hinge and closing it again. He’d like to hold that knife again, Hickey thinks to himself. The handle was smooth, the weight of it beautifully reassuring. 

“Where’d you get it?”

“Filched it,” she leans against his shoulder, still suckling the gin bottle.

He smiles.

“There,” she sighs, dropping her head into his lap, “isn’t Bess ever so kind to yer? Isn’t Bess your good girl?”

He strokes her hair and fusses over her, the way she always liked him to, slipping the knife into his pocket. What a thing it was, to own something like that. He ought to have pawned it, perhaps, for he’d never been a man to hold onto anything unnecessary. But he kept it. He held onto it even after he left Bess, until it ended up in some prison official’s pocket a year or two later, when he did his first stretch.

“What do you think Bess is doing now?” The spirit of Billy asks, at his shoulder. 

“How should I know?”

“This was your last Christmas with her. You didn’t spend Christmas with a friend again.”

“What’s a friend?” he tuts, “she and I, we rubbed along for a bit, that’s all.”

“If you say so,” Billy sighs, shaking his head slowly, as though it has grown heavy. The room is darkling, the lantern Billy carries with him grows dim, the flame shrinking by the moment. Billy himself has begun to look tired and faded; deep circles form under his eyes, his cheeks are pale and gaunt and his hair is like fraying old rope.

“Are you well, Billy?”

He nods, yawning, “my time with you is short. The next spirit will be along at two bells.”

“I don’t know what it is you think you’ve shown me,” Hickey says, indignant and reluctant to lose Billy’s company, which he has always been fond of. “I knew all of this.”

“You don’t feel anything for this boy?” Gibson gestures at the young man on the bed, stroking Bess’ arm while she snores. “Or the child in the workhouse?”

“There’s nothing to feel for them. They aren’t here anymore.”

“If that’s true,” Billy says, sadly, as the room vanishes around them, Red Bess and her kid melting back into the darkness they will always live in together, “then I am sorry for you. Perhaps you won’t understand. Or perhaps the next spirit will have more luck than me.” 

Now the shadow covers them both, and Billy - his spirit - starts to slip away. He watches Hickey all the while with the same pitying look. 

“Billy?”

“You know, even if you can’t understand it,” Gibson says, his voice growing quieter with each breath, “I am glad I was here to see it with you. Two bells, remember.”

Hickey squints again, trying to make out the spirit’s face in the last dying moments, “Billy?” he says again - and opens his eyes sitting bolt upright in his sickbay hammock. 

*

**_Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits_ **

He swears he can still hear the vibrations of the first bell ringing in the air of the darkened sickbay as he stares about himself looking for Billy. He is met with only the snores and unconscious mumbles of the sleeping crew, and has no way of knowing how much time has passed.

Having had quite enough for one night, Hickey swings his legs over the side of his hammock and drops out of it. If there is another spirit coming, as the ghost of Cornelius Hickey promised, then this time he will meet it standing on his own two feet, and not be caught unawares in his underclothes. He takes down his jacket and puts it on, beginning to feel the cold once more. 

Just as he is buttoning himself, the bell rings twice, startling him. Turning about himself, he glares at the shadows and pale swinging forms of his companions, but sees nothing. There is light pouring in from the passageway behind the sickbay curtain. It is a richer, more amber light than Billy’s lantern, more like a fire burning somewhere in the ship. Hickey decides to follow it, stepping slowly through the curtain in his bare feet. 

The light grows brighter as he progresses, and a soft warmth seems to envelope him - nothing like the sweltering fug from before, but comfortable and gratifying after so many months of frigid cold. Ahead of him is the fo’c’sle, where the warmth is emanating from, and as he approaches a voice calls out to him and encourages him forward. He obeys. 

It is _Terror’s_ fo’c’sle, there is no doubt about that, but it appears to have undergone a surprising transformation. The boards and ceiling are hung with green garlands, gleaming with bright red berries, so that it looks more like an evening in St James’ Park than the dirty old ship Hickey has come to know so well. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflect back the light like so many little mirrors have been scattered there; and a mighty blaze roars in Diggle’s squat stove.

Heaped up on the mess table is food - more than there can possibly be left in the hold; pyramids of red tin cans, stacks of salt beef, pork and fish, baskets of apples and tall glass bottles of preserved lemon juice. There are loaves of bread, piled up and still steaming from the oven, great black blocks of drinking chocolate, barrels filled to the brim with frothing beer and a haystack of sweet smelling brown tobacco. In easy state, presiding over it all and glorious to see, is Sergeant Tozer, holding up a glowing torch which lights on Hickey as he enters. 

"Cornelius!" He raises his torch higher in greeting, a broad smile one his face. Hickey is sure he has never seen Tozer in such cheerful spirits before. It looks very well on him. “Come in, then,” Tozer gestures.

He’s sitting perched atop the grog tub, the gleaming brass letters between his knees just legible - _THE QUEEN GOD BLESS HER._ He wears a glossy garland of holly in his bright yellow hair, the red berries made all the brighter by the proud scarlet of his uniform. 

“It’s you, then,” Hickey looks up at him, “the third spirit.”

“I am the ghost of Christmas present,” Tozer confirms.

Hickey nods, to show he understands. After all that has happened tonight he would be ready to see or believe anything at all, but really it comes as no surprise to him that it is now Solomon Tozer who is responsible for his soul. He’s as good a man as any, and a better man than most.

Glancing once again at the food, Hickey wonders that he doesn’t feel hungry. He’s sure any other man on the expedition would fall upon it all and gorge himself, but then he supposes he has never been given to excess. 

“We’d better get on with it, then,” he says to Tozer. 

“In a hurry, are you?” Tozer steps down from the barrel, tugging on his coat to keep it straight. His cheeks are rosy with merriment, as though he’s had his extra tot already, his dark eyes glittering in the torchlight.

“I don’t expect the present to last very long.”

Solomon laughs, eyes creasing, “you’re too clever for your own good, you know.”

“Well?” Hickey raises his eyebrows.

Solomon extends his hand and Hickey takes it without so much as a thought. The mess tables, tins, fruit and casks melt away at once, and by taking only one step together Hickey finds they have arrived on the polished, rug strewn floor of the captain’s own great cabin. 

He was here once before, in daylight. The scene now is markedly different. It is dark, the last candle recently gone out, and has a foul odour of rotten eggs and piss. He recognises it. It’s the way Bess smelled on her worst days. 

Captain Crozier kneels hunched over his seat of ease, puking noisily. His crystal decanter of whisky is on the table, a quarter full at most. The empty tumbler rolls on its side, presumably knocked over in the captain’s haste to void himself.

“More pretty sights, then,” Hickey says, taking the opportunity to stroll around the table, to read the titles of the books on the shelves and touch the frames of the pictures on the wall.

“Just pay attention, would yer,” Tozer says.

“To what?” Hickey throws carelessly over his shoulder. Crozier chokes again, then spits.

The cabin door slides open and Mr Jopson enters. He clearly isn’t surprised to find his captain in his present state, and walks neatly across the floor to him, pausing to set down the jug of water he carries and correct the overturned tumbler as he does. Crozier finishes at the bowel and in an attempt to sit back on his knees, lands on his arse with a grunt. Hickey snorts.

Jopson is right there, leaning over him and dabbing at his face with a handkerchief, then hooking an arm under Crozier’s to get him to his feet again, “up we get, Captain.”

“Leave me down here,” Crozier bats him away. “I’ll be back again soon enough.”

His words have no effect, and Jopson hoists him upright without further discussion. 

“Perhaps if you ate something, sir, to line the stomach.” 

“I’ve a harder time keeping that swill down than the whisky.” Standing under his own power, Crozier staggers back into his chair and pours the remaining contents of the decanter into his glass. Jopson begins to re-light the candles about the room.

“Poor fare this year sir, I take your meaning,” the steward nods, wiping down the round polished table. “But the officers are gathering for their Christmas meal in half an hour or so, will you be joining them?”

Crozier is quiet. Slouched in his seat, he glares at the bottom of his glass, turning it slowly. “Have we had a weather report?”

“Yes, sir, not much changed since yesterday. Lieutenant Little expects the storm to continue for the rest of the week.”

“Christ,” Crozier drinks, then rubs at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. 

“It’s a bad one,” Jopson agrees without the slightest ill-humour, “it makes me think more fondly of the Antarctic expedition, sir.”

“Does it?” Crozier raises his head, “doesn’t make me think fondly of anything.”

“Do you remember the giant petrel we had for Christmas dinner, sir? Roasted up a treat,” Jopson continues, “McCormick shot seven on Christmas eve, if I remember rightly.”

“Hah,” Crozier nods, grunting laughter, “that man was on a mission to wipe out every species we encountered.”

“Quite right sir, he was never without his rifle.” Jopson finishes his tidying and now takes another crystal glass from the cabinet. He brings this to the table and fills it with water from the jug, setting it purposefully beside Crozier’s whisky.

“Where do you think he is now?” Crozier asks. 

“Making merry with some other exotic bird at his table, I imagine.”

“Do you know, I hope you’re right, Jopson,” Crozier half laughs, and lifts the glass of water to his lips, drinking deeply. 

Mr Jopson smiles down at his captain, clearly pleased with this paltry success. “Perhaps I ought to join the lieutenants for dinner,” Crozier slurs, straightening, “it’s Christmas after all.”

Bored, Hickey returns his attention to the cabin windows; the brilliant white snow pressed up against the glass and the everlasting blackness of the night which holds them prisoner just as much as the ice does.

“Oi,” Tozer comes to join him. “You’re supposed to be listening.”

“I’m always listening,” Hickey strains his eyes, he wishes he could see further, he wishes to see beyond himself. He is so tired of this ship.

“Do you see, though?” Tozer asks, pulling him back to the room, to Crozier and Jopson talking pleasantly between themselves about nothing of any significance as the captain readies himself for dinner. 

“Don’t know what I’m meant to see. I know the punishment for drunkenness though - must only apply to the likes of us, eh?”

“But Mr Jopson--”

“Bugger Jopson,” Hickey sneers, “if he thinks mothering an old sot like that will win him any favours. Tell you what I see; a man that’s going to get us all killed and another who's too much of a coward to say so.”

“There’s time for Crozier to change,” Solomon says, “and there’s time for you.”

“Very well for you to say, being a spirit of the present,” Hickey argues, “I’d take my chances alone out there before I relied on another man to change his nature.”

“Stranger things have happened,” replies Tozer, without a trace of irony. 

“I believe that, at least.”

“Let’s see what the crew are doing then, since they are your concern,” Solomon tuts, shaking his great head so that the holly leaves rustle.

They turn back, and in the manner Hickey has now become accustomed to, they return to the fo’c’sle without having to navigate any of the other compartments or passageways of the ship. The scene here is of course a good deal livelier than in the great cabin, though at the same time considerably smaller than previous celebrations aboard _Terror_ , being that the bulk of the crew have left for _Erebus_. 

Their reduced number has not diminished the volume of noise they are able to create; Lane at his screeching fiddle and all of them singing out of tune, feet stamping and tankards thudding off the tables. The deck is more bare than Hickey saw it earlier - no fresh green branches or lively berries, only thin men in dark clothes with pale faces.

They are playing blind man’s buff, Hartnell has a blue handkerchief tied around his eyes and staggers about, trying to catch his shipmates with wide grasping arms. They make a game of getting close, tapping his shoulder or shouting in his ear, then leaping back, ducking his wide swinging movements. 

Armitage, huddled against the bulkhead engaged in furtive conversation with two of the marines, jumps forward and tries to kick Hartnell’s ankles from under him. He catches him on the second try and Tom gives a high pitched yelp as he keels over backwards, rescued at the last moment by the strong steady arms of Magnus Manson, who roars with laughter. The marines pat Armitage on the back and every man is satisfied in his own way with the caper.

“Sailors are like children,” Hickey says, watching them pile onto each other. “Boys, all of you.”

“They’re having a bit of fun,” Solomon says beside him, grinning and looking as though he’d like to join in too. "It's good to be children, sometimes."

"Is it?" Hickey grumbles derisively. "I don't remember it being good."

Tozer says nothing, and they watch the men enjoying themselves. Their plates lie empty at their tables, the Christmas meal cannot have been much. 

“Don’t reckon many of them will live to next Christmas,” Hickey says, offhandedly. “By the looks of them.”

“You might be right,” Tozer keeps his tone measured. “But tonight they’re alive, and they are all together. They’re your friends too aren’t they? When we haven’t much between us, isn’t it better to share what we have? To look to one another for comfort and joy?”

“If this is about the tobacco, Sergeant, I was sure I had repaid the favour,” Hickey raises an eyebrow.

Tozer scowls, “you’re a contrary little gobshite, you know that?”

“I thought you’d changed your tune,” Hickey says, “we’re pals now, you and me, eh? Look.”

He nods at himself, across the deck sitting at his bench with a tankard of grog. He is offering it to Solomon - the real Solomon Tozer, rather than the celestial one - and the marine sergeant takes it from him, leaning sideways to hear something Hickey whispers into his ear as he drinks. He bursts out laughing, spraying grog over the rim of the cup and doubling over the table to save his uniform. 

They’ve never sat together before, Hickey notes with satisfaction. At least he can rest assured now that he’s close to getting Sol around to his way of thinking - perhaps collapsing in the fo’c’sle was just the thing. Sweet Solomon, how very gallant of him.

“Smirk all you like, Mr Hickey,” the spirit says to him, knowing his mind at once. “You may not know our message yet, but you have another visitor coming your way at four bells, and there’ll be no escaping the truth of it then.”

“The truth of what?”

“Not my business, I’ll leave that to them,” the spirit says, “the ghost of Christmas future.”

“Does that mean you’re finished with me, Sergeant?”

“Pah, I’m finished with you, all right,” the ghost Tozer shakes his head, “I only wish they were.” He casts his eyes over the men, still laughing and cheering, blindfolding Magnus now for his turn at the game. 

*

**_Stave 4: The Third of the Three Spirits_ **

The bell strikes four times, and he awakens in his hammock as though he never left it. His jacket is still hanging on its hook. The quiet lies so thick upon him after the racket of the crew’s celebrations. He sits up and looks about himself for the ghost, but sees nothing. As the last chime ceases to vibrate, he thinks of Cornelius Hickey, only briefly, before he lifts his eyes once more to see a solemn phantom, hooded and coming like a mist across the decks towards him.

He climbs quickly out of his hammock, and finds himself quite alone in the room, except for this creature. He stands rooted to the spot. 

The phantom slowly, gravely, silently approaches, and when it comes Hickey draws the blankets about himself, for the very air which the spirit moves in seems to scatter gloom and mystery. It is shrouded in a fur hood which conceals its head, its face, its form, and leaves nothing visible save one outstretched hand. Despite himself, its presence fills Hickey with dread. The spirit does not speak or move.

“You are the spirit of Christmas future?” Hickey asks, clearing his throat.

The phantom raises its hands and pulls back its hood. At once he feels foolish for not recognising the furs, for now her face is revealed the ghost takes on the clear form of Lady Silence. He has never looked at her for very long - their prior encounters have been somewhat hurried, his mind on other things - but he looks now.

Her black hair stands out smooth and shining against the soft white fur of her hood. Her face is impassive, which he finds something of a comfort. She doesn't give much away, and that's enough to calm him. 

“Evening,” he nods to her. “Keen to talk to me, are you?”

She stares at him, then over his head, past him. They don't need a common tongue for him to understand her contempt for him. She has every right. Still, it is eerie to hear no response at all. He does not know how best to proceed.

"It wasn't personal, you know," he offers, feeling queerly generous. Perhaps the spirits are working their power on him after all. “What I did. I just had to show them the truth, do you understand? Can’t blame a man for that.”

She does not answer, she only looks past him, as if he is not her concern at all.

"I know you're here to show me what I've got coming," he says, impatient to hurry things along. "I'm ready to see it."

Her gaze does not flicker, and he finally looks behind himself to see what she sees. Amazed, he turns around fully. He is in a place he has never been before. A church - a cathedral, the ceiling is higher than any factory or workhouse or warehouse, high as the mast on _Terror_. He must be back in England; well dressed ladies and gentlemen mill about the place, gliding between great stone columns and through patches of coloured sunlight streaming in through the stained glass. 

A service has clearly just ended, there is a brisk sense of relief and eagerness in the air. Christmas day, Hickey supposes, though he doesn’t know when. The fashions have changed, somewhat. The women’s hats are taller, and so is their hair. Men’s collars are not so high as they were when he left England.

He and Lady Silence stand separate from the congregation, in an alcove decorated with marble sculptures and reliefs. Not statues, he realises as he looks more closely. Tombstones. Memorials to the dead. He is about to ask why he has been brought to such a place, when a young man and woman, both attractive and very finely ornamented, duck into the same alcove with them, and make to pretend that they are reading the inscriptions below a particular bust.

They are using it as a cover for some flirting, Hickey sees it at once in the girl’s rosey cheeks and the man’s knowing grin. He gropes her backside when they think no one can see them, and she stifles a shrill giggle.

“You mustn’t,” she whispers, sounding pleased, “mama will see, and she will never invite you and your sisters to supper tomorrow.”

“Ah, well, I could not miss the famous Boxing Day charades tournament,” he chuckles.

“Quite right,” she snips, “so keep your hands to yourself.”

They both make a show of looking at the memorial once more. She even bends forward, apparently to better admire the carving, though the gentleman clearly takes the opportunity to admire something else entirely. 

“What a tragedy that was,” the young woman says, straightening up again. “My father often spoke of it. He was a navy man.”

“Explains why his daughter is so saucy.”

“Thirty years ago! Can you imagine? Poor Lady Jane,” she sighs romantically. 

“We used to tell ghost stories about it in the dorm at Eton,” her companion says, his moustache twitching with amusement, “I had nightmares for a month that one of Franklin’s ravenous sailors was coming to eat me.”

“Roderick!” The woman chastises him, though she raises her gloved hand to laugh behind. “You are _bad_.”

“Henrietta?” an old woman calls from the pews, “come along, child, we are going home.”

The couple turns and walks away, leaving the alcove empty once more. 

“They never found the ships, then,” Hickey says, and Lady Silence looks back at him. He steps up to get his own look at the inscription. The hairs on his neck stand up as he reads. “Not one man?”

He steps away, glancing up at the domed marble head of Sir John Franklin, who he had barely seen in person more than a handful of times, and even then at a distance. The faces he remembers are quite different. He recalls Magnus laughing at blind man’s buff before shaking the thought away. 

It is beside the point. This statue means nothing - this ugly lump of marble - it does not spell out _his_ future. He has reinvented himself before, he can do it again. Perhaps Cornelius Hickey was marked for death. But he is not. Not yet, it can’t be yet.

“It says Sir John,” he says to Lady Silence, who has been watching him all this time. “I don’t see any poems for me. I might yet live. If you’re so powerful, why don’t you show me right now, eh?” 

She nods, very slightly, and a frigid breeze catches them both, blowing into his eyes so that he has to raise his arm to shield them, shutting them tight against the sudden flare of brightness. 

When he lowers his arm he is in the Arctic - or he presumes they must be, for the wind is icy and grey shale stretches out before him for miles and miles around, impossibly flat so that he cannot make out the horizon at all. The only living thing - or at least the only moving thing - is Lady Silence in her white and brown furs, walking away from him.

He rubs at his arms, beginning to tremble as he runs to follow her, feet slipping and skidding, making a dreadful clattering, crunching sound which snaps through the clean air around them. He is panting by the time he catches up to her, wishing he had put on his coat when he'd had a chance to, back in the infirmary. She pays him no mind, only walks, eyes fixed on some point in the distance he cannot see.

“Hard place to live in, this,” he says to her, after some time. “Hard world to live in all over, but we do our best, don’t we?”

She is not interested in his observations, and treads on, moving steadily across the shale, quite determined in her direction. Hickey finds it something of a relief, to be led by one so sure of themselves. 

Despite the cold and the howling wind and the dreadful shale, he is glad to be back. He is glad to know that he will not return to England, not ever. He is grateful for nothing, and expectant of everything as he strides forward into this new and unexplored territory, the promise of a future he feels he has been trying to reach since he was a boy.

He sees the boat first. A flat black shape disturbing the landscape, a long, long way from the sea, hopelessly lost. The chains and hauling ropes stretch limp across the rocks, and nothing else, only piles of rags. He doesn’t know what kind of place this is. There is no scent at all here, there is only cold.

He is closer, much closer when he realises what he is seeing, mingled in with the rocks. The shirt of a man catches his eye first, torn in two pieces. Beneath that, the whitening bones of the man himself. Once he sees that, he begins to see the rest, and steps backwards a few paces, in case he stands on any. Sick realisation creeps into his chest - spirit or not, his heart begins to thud loudly in his ears.

“Which one am I?” He asks his companion. She says nothing. Why should she. 

He stares, and everywhere he looks there is another bone, another piece of a man - the wind has scattered them, or else bears have picked them over, muddled them all together. Here a skull, cracked open, there part of a rib cage, jutting up like the beams of an upturned ship - yellow teeth and long thigh bones and scraps of torn clothing all lie here slipping between the rocks, slowly digested by the terrain.

“Where am I?” He asks again, hearing the panic in his voice. “Which one? Which parts?”

He turns to Lady Silence, beginning to tremble once more as the cold seeps into his extremities, down to his bones, “you’ll tell me,” he says, his teeth chattering, “you’ll tell me where I am, you bitch, you--” 

A bell chimes, so loud he winces, his head splitting as he wraps his arms around himself, shivering. His eyes water and as the bell tolls again, Lady Silence turns away from him and begins to walk.

“Tell me!” He shouts, his throat tight and voice thick, “tell me now!”

*

The bells are still ringing when he wakes again, once more in the dingy sickbay. His arms are still twisted about his body, one of the ice bags has leaked and soaked his bedding in freezing water. He sits up, throwing the blankets off, and sees the doctor tying on his apron, rolling up his sleeves to begin his rounds.

“What day is it?” 

Mcdonald looks up with mild surprise, and crosses over to see him. “It’s Christmas day, Mr Hickey, just rung eight bells.”

He looks about at the infirmary; revolting and still reeking, but entirely ordinary. “Yes,” he says, as the doctor touches a hand to his forehead, then the back of his neck. “Of course you are right.”

None of it can have happened then. All a fever dream, made too real by the laudanum. There is no marble bust, there are no bones; Christmas day has not yet begun, and he is just where he ought to be. 

“Your fever has broken, Mr Hickey,” Mcdonald says brightly. “If you’re fit to stand you may take your breakfast with your messmates.”

Hickey cannot get out of the hammock fast enough, feeling the rough scabs on his arse pull and crack perilously as he does. He holds his breath and swallows it down, and his face gives nothing away as Mcdonald watches him dress himself with a skeptical eye. “I’ve spoken with Mr Darlington,” he says, as Hickey successfully buttons his trousers. “Light duties only.”

“Much obliged, doctor,” Hickey smiles, shrugging into his waistcoat. 

“Off you go, then,” Mcdonald gives a satisfied nod, “and happy Christmas, lad.”

“Same to you, doctor,” Hickey finally pulls on his coat and steps into his shoes. He leaves the infirmary with a spring in his step, and chances to whistle the first notes of _God rest ye merry gentlemen_.

“Enough of that, Mr Hickey,” Tozer’s drawl booms out from amidships. The sergeant steps out, straight backed and rifle in hand, though a small smile lifts the corners of his mouth. “Feeling better, then?”

“Didn’t know you cared, Sergeant,” Hickey grins, sparing him the barest look as he passes through to the fo’c’sle to take up his usual place. Armitage nods his usual greeting, and across the deck he catches Billy watching. 

“Happy Christmas, Cornelius,” Magnus beams at him, arriving with both of their bowls and setting them down. “Porridge and treacle.”

“Happy Christmas, Magnus,” Hickey smiles. He takes up his spoon, and looks down at his steaming bowl, finding that his appetite has returned.

Famished, he begins to eat, his mind firmly on the future. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Poem at the beginning from 'Christmas Day in the Workhouse' by George Robert Sims.


End file.
